Southeast Asia (SEA) has emerged as a hotspot in global climate change, land cover and land use change (LCLUC), geopolitical conflicts, and societal changes since the end of World War II. As a result of systematic efforts of the NASA LCLUC Program since the early 2000s, massive amounts of data, remote sensing images, and other geospatial products have been collected, substantial human resources and research networks have been built, many tools and models have been developed, and significant knowledge has been gained in the region.  In this proposal, we established an interdisciplinary team of active scholars within the SARI Program to bring relevant efforts, with LCLUC projects as the core, toward a synthesis of data, tools, models, and knowledge so that our previous research can be used to generate more value to the scientific community and society. We propose to focus on the urban-rural continuums (URC) – an innovative concept adopted by this team – as our primary domain of synthesis. Nineteen URCs of cities of various sizes from 8 SEA countries have been selected for detailed analyses at the local level.  Our synthesis effort will be guided by the research questions examine/quantify drivers, patterns, and processes of land use transformation across the URC.

Our synthesis will be guided by the overall hypothesis that the process and outcome of land transitions and related ecosystem change across URC are jointly determined by: (1) the importance of the attached urban center in global/regional city hierarchy, reflected by population size, economic development level, and global connection, (2) the relative location along the URC (to the associated urban center) and its relevant features represented by connectivity (distance) to center/subcenters and access to major physical/social infrastructures, and (3) institutional policies enforced by the national government and local urban planning.

This synthesis project advances knowledge frontiers by generating theories and models for land transition and its socio-environmental impact across the URC at different temporal and spatial scales. Methodologically, our project integrates remotely sensed measurements with LCLUCs, climate models, ecological models, and socioeconomic analyses. In addition to generating peer-reviewed, open-access publications in high-impact academic journals to share our research findings, the outcomes of the research will enrich the public knowledge and will help decision-making of policy makers at different levels.